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Brenda Iijima’s involvements occur at the intersections and mutations of poetry, research movement, animal studies, ecological sociology and submerged histories. She is the author of seven full-length collections of poetry and numerous chapbooks and artist’s books. Her most recent book, Remembering Animals was published by Nightboat Books in 2016. She is also the editor of the eco language reader (Nightboat Books and PP@YYL). She is the editor of Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, located in Brooklyn, NY.
Roberto Harrison is the author of Os (subpress, 2006), Counter Daemons (Litmus Press, 2006), bicycle (Noemi Press, 2015), culebra (Green Lantern Press, 2016), Bridge of the World (Litmus, forthcoming 2017), Yaviza (Atelos, forthcoming 2017), as well as of many chapbooks. He is also a visual artist. He lives in Milwaukee with his wife Brenda Cárdenas.
Soham Patel is the author of two chapbooks from Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs: and nevermind the storm (2013) and New Weather Drafts (2016). Her work has been included in Copper Nickel, eleven eleven journal, Denver Quarterly, and various other places. She is a Kundiman fellow and a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee where she also serves as a poetry editor for cream city review.
The now is this prediction—is tensile
a suspended opening in realtime
you can feel the comingling of futurity
gale and guile synchronicity with vectors
bodies—overgrown inner lives, internal predictability
they’ll have water
a glass of water
water—an infinite proposition
to maintain water as gift
the water is a glass agile
clear, held—molecular
the glass cylindrical vessel explodes concentration
one glass of water on a planet of happening
proficiency compels the reckoning
the prompt—
open action seawater
presently in the dense forest of hometown locale
or at a FEMA camp
fluid gestation—seawater
liquid action
open action as in a glass of water
hard to come by
available at the site of disaster
the president finally airlifted some water in
in water days after hurricane
how we watched in suspended animation
water to a disaster of water
inner lives perturbed by water
going through synthesis
seawater glassy, rising
—Brenda Iijima, from POEMS FROM BIONIC COMMUNALITY
uncover like monsoon uncovers mud but under the rain
the rain the rain I see more than one more than one shiver one
more quake like the congruity of have of fog of a body’s simple
concordance filth from disease heat on sugar caramel I will burp
through my teeth burp fumes’ commiseration I will not disguise
in overcoats end at pull my leg or my finger or any other pirate joke
—Soham Patel, from New Weather Drafts
symbol table
(for “someone traveling,” “sound of eating,” and, especially, “high in the sky”
— of the Ojibwa, circa 1870)
read the river
for “high in the sky”
not so long ago. hands left
the chain
to dissolve
each winter. in the turning
cash
a boat wanders through
silently, for one
burning down
a knot
in the clearing, for a bird
an answer
erases. each one
a number left
to its root, the growth
of an infinite
eclipse, like the fern
a face makes
for words, in the train
a heart
a road ends. a twin, for her
morning, in the bloated
corn, in the burning…
her amputation, like a lake
arrives inside
to hear her whisper, the cipher
cuts through her living
in this, the attachment
for the hand to hand
doorway. what state in the eclipse
of its shadow makes
one stand? as a cloud
moves for the horses
of their songs, in the bomb
as it aims through the path
when visiting. each empire
China hidden in reflections, the weather
opens inside the highway of its prehistoric pit,
where the lake region, its language revolving
in the smoke as a circle
makes one arrive for the menial
white stone outside a harvest
of flesh nubs, a secretive
and silent family, without reward
as they are the unknown that starts
a thorn, as the morning
is standing for them in an open hand, they
speak. the underwater cave
determines the paths of a knotted interior
in a fall for choosing, lightning
does not remove the veil, behind the language
a river threatens for its music –
future wood in a soundless word.
then, it was the bicycle/ the commerce
of its kind in a radio permeation
as the leather makes one in its ocean see
the operator, the climbing
canoe where they arrive, the shore wind
stringing kingfishers
as they are a visitor, not one to receive
in the atrophy, the flag sound
as it is perfectly round
speaking – in a thatch, they were the signal
to understand. to return
their ground for the gun, as the differences between
the white and feverish park
and the winter in its cake
will not charge you, will not enter
its elaborate front. the spinning
in Panamá, their ghostly bus
will stand inside the arrival
as they become you, the sand
in its first word
ghetto plants in winter
on the run, the three are silent
with a visitation
trembling, invested, and the light
to wear one for the torso as it packages
the allure of your housing
with another plane to fill this, in the seat
of your miniscule cadaver, the dogs are
what any chain is shiny for
you, in the shelter under ropes
their vast landscape in the spoken
to the air far with flowers, a harpy eagle
swoops to the sloth as you wear
the matrimony and the only servant
filled with each starving donation, the poor
will become your iron – not what puts a hand
to your face. a fall for your region, the paper
makes families reside, with food, and a dog
in the aftermath as you speak
to wear the oil, the Alaskan terminal determined
the wild with its alarm, the on and off
reprisal believes you, what you speak to allow
a complete knowledge of interruption, the road
beaming for you to deliver the promise
as one stands for the flesh because / a human does not allow
or falling for the recent drone / you leak for color
in the spider web’s communiqué
it serves you as it is a word to belong / as one is not
as the speaking arrives to your western
with a relative, in the midnight
and each table does not attend to the vast dotted theft
you see. it is one to the root of your time with a pyramid
it is not there to it
it sees you as country, not a ring in the flight
of its standing for the glass
it is a tall mirror side of its house
it is one with time as it is a face
to not allow it. not one of a human affirmation
it does not let you one with the hand as it is nothing but a door
the promise is not a single plane
to the river it sees one out
it speaks as one is a tunnel
in air of it arriving with one to become / not one
—Roberto Harrison